That’s how we got to Austin

Never underestimate the influence of college basketball’s Selection Sunday – or friends with Catholic connections.

By the time you read this I will be the former managing editor of the Catholic Review. My wife, Mary, and I are retiring to Austin, Texas. We’ve got kids on both coasts; Austin splits the difference and we can walk to multiple venues in the Live Music Capital of the World.

Just about everyone who helped get us there works for the Catholic Church or went to a Catholic school.

Our infatuation with Austin goes back to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament in 1990, when the luck of the draw sent Towson University, the very last seed in a 64-team tournament, there to play No. 1 Oklahoma. I went there as a sports writer for The Sun. It was Baltimore’s first appearance – and mine – at the Division I tournament, and the locale added to the magnitude of the event. I kept finagling business trips to the state capital, which became a destination for vacations and even our daughter Kate’s wedding to Micah. Some folks go to Disney World or the Caribbean. Mary and I kept going back to Austin.

In that 1990 NCAA tournament, things got uncomfortable for the favorite real fast, as 15,000 Oklahoma-hating Texans took a liking to the upstarts from Baltimore. Three of the Tigers’ starting five played in the Baltimore Catholic League. The small forward was Kelly Williamson, a graduate of Calvert Hall who I kept running into over the years. I trusted him enough to serve as the mortgage loan officer when our son, Don, bought his first house. Kelly served in the same capacity when Mary and I bought in Austin.

Mary Ellen Russell, the former head of the Maryland Catholic Conference who’s been a colleague at the Catholic Center in recent years, has family in Austin. We were talking Texas one day in the office, and in rapid order, Shay Hargus Webb, a friend of one of Mary Ellen’s sisters, became our real estate purchasing agent. She served us well in one of the hottest markets in the nation. 

When it came time to sell our home on Sue Creek in eastern Baltimore County  Missy Miller Aldave, a graduate of the former Archbishop Keough High School, handled the job with aplomb. She came on the recommendation of our financial advisor. I first encountered Joe Barger in the early 1980s, when he was an underclassmen on some pretty good Fallston High soccer teams. He developed into a stellar defender for Loyola University Maryland, and helped the Greyhounds to the NCAA quarterfinals in successive years. A decade later, Joe was running clinics for the CYO boys’ team I coached at St. Anthony of Padua in Gardenville. Mary and I trust our future to Joe. 

The Catholic Church also helps when you’re downsizing and looking to shed ballast. Our work garb went to the Assisi House at St. Patrick’s in Fells Point, where Sister Michele runs a clothing center in coordination with the Esperanza Center. Last year’s Works of Mercy series in the Review featured the Resource Exchange at St. Vincent de Paul Parish in Baltimore, which furnishes apartments for folks moving out of transitional housing. Taking notes at the space they rent at a storage facility, I saw strapping young men moving couches and dining room tables for them. Joe Cronyn and Ray Heil, the volunteers who came to pick up a futon and other assorted pieces from our home on the hottest day of June, are a tad more mature than that. 

In joining them in retirement, I vow to find a similar cause or two, albeit one that does not involve heavy lifting.       

An upcoming “Amen” column will feature McMullen’s reflections on his years at the Catholic Review.

Also see

Listen when God speaks

Home is where love is

Make a difference

‘The Bridge is love’

More than a ‘cracker’

‘Stack days’ for growth

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